In-Laws... The Unfathomable Habits!

Whole family round at her Grandparents for boxing day, the miserable little sod sits on her own with her coat on for six hours, refuses to eat the meal prepared for her and sulks like a small child.

The rest of 'em are a delight - mother in law is a ringer for Nursey from Blackadder, father in law does a great line in sarcasm and the brother, sister and sons in law are all delightfully odd.
Even the dogs are well behaved

This year has been its and pieces of the above, made all the more interesting with it being the current Mrs. Pinkster's birthday on Christmas Day as well.

Last Christmas was however marvelous. We decamped on Christmas Eve to a SC holiday let on the outskirts of Conwy, had Christmas dinner in the Groes Inn, which was amazing, and completely ignored the rest of the world.

After never having a Christmas on our own since being together, we decided this year to have just a small family one. Us and the kids. Brilliant! None of the stuff that always accompanies families, our day at our pace.

Mine are fine, though the mother inlaw does have the odd moment. This years was telling my GF (soon to be wife, getting married next year) that no one would be looking at what the groom or bride would be wearing and that the thing people will be most interested in is what the mother of the bride wears. I told her I wold wear shorts in that case, apparently not acceptable as there may be a picture of me and her together. She is great most of the rest of the time though!

I was a little mythed as to why we, (Fil, Mil and wifes grandad) managed to go through eight toilet rolls in the space of four hours, while waiting for my wife to return from work on Christmas day.

It transpired that the wifes 94 year old grandad is the worse shot ever in the pi$$ing department and every visit to the little boys room for him, was followed up by the Mil to mop up the "excess" showered all over the floor. Thank god that we now have a tiled floor and not a carpet....

Fair play to him though, he's 94, on the day drank drank two bottles of wine, half a bottle of champagne and a very large port as a nightcap.

One of the last of a very special generation of people who have morals and showed respect to others. An honour to have him around at anytime not just Christmas.

Lunge - I'm get married in a weeks time and had exactly the same conversation with the MiL. She would also like her own special song to walk down the aisle to. I very politely told her to get @~"&*^&*%

And surely leaving a chocolate hostage in the toilet is just plain dangerous. I generally need 2 or 3 flushes every visit to get rid of the evidence.

My brother's girlfriend spent the last 2 christmases with us, and this has made us understand that playing boardgames, insanely competitively, until 4am is not normal behaviour. First year she had a crying fit after a huge argument about the rules of monopoly (rules are IMPORTANT damnit!), this year she just said no, I'm not playing thankyou, you're all mental.

Sometimes I wonder if we'd all better off not treating Xmas as a family occasion at all and just spending it on our own

We've done this for years. Just the 2 of us, 3 now, with Ted the dog.
It had just got to the point where Christmas Day was spent driving all over. We don't have kids so it was kind of expected we'd travel to family that do cos 'its all about the kids' which is kind of fair enough. However, when you have worked your nads off and could really do with relaxing, to spend the day travelling around, only to spend time mostly sitting with folk (my side of things) who were too engrossed in playstation etc to really notice we were around got a touch erm, tedious....
Routine now - get up, relaxed brekkie, presents, ring round important folk, walk the dog, meet friends in pub, couple of beers, home (light fire, if appropriate) enjoy Christmas lunch over the rest of the day, sleep.
We do catch up with family but on an 'as and when' basis - no pressure for anyone to roll out 'the perfect Christmas meal' for everyone.

Constant weather updates.
All sorts of crap information, which must be absolute gospel as 'they' say so, whoever the **** 'they' are.
Reminding us every five minutes to give the dog his medication, like we've been doing perfectly happily every day for the last six years without needing reminding.
Constant questions about what time we're going to do this and what time we're going to do that. Usually not even today but three days hence.
Absolute silence required required during *insert name of garbage soap opera here* or Downton Abbey, but talks endlessley over the top of anything worthwhile that we're trying to watch.

I remember hearing on a local radio station once, a mother requesting a tune for her daughters wedding ...... 'Band of Gold'! Being charitable I thought charitably, she had obviously not listened to the lyrics .... or had she? I wonder if the presenter even realised what he was doing and did he get any flack?!